How long will my e-bike battery last?
Hey everyone, I'm Dustin. I have 20 years of experience in the bike and e-bike industry. Today I'm going to talk about how long your e-bike will last and what the truth is about e-bike range. All right, this is a Simple step-through 750-watt fat tire e-bike from sixthreezero. All right, so I get the question all the time. We have a lot of people come into San Clemente. What's the range, okay? And so there are different battery sizes, of course. You're gonna see commonly 10 amp hour, 14 amp hour, 20 amp hour, and then there's volts too. So you can have 48 volts, 60 volts, 20 amp hours, and all of these, as the numbers go up, they do become larger batteries. Now, in terms of talking about the range, e-bikes are not as sophisticated as electric cars. So they're more susceptible to different elements, including the weight of the rider, the type of hills you're riding, and the terrain.
So the range can vary pretty wildly depending on the circumstances. So, a 240-pound rider versus a 180-pound rider. a 10% grade hill versus a 2% grade hill. So all we can talk about, like with our 14 amp hour on this one, is I can say up to 50 miles. And that's about the best I can do because it depends on whether you're using the throttle, it depends on whether you're using pedal assist, and also what level of pedal assist you're using. Are you using the pedal assist level five on a steep hill? Using more, a higher level on a hill is gonna drain the battery quicker.
","id":"f62af500-03c4-4376-9817-aa4097990c0d"},{"layoutId":"bike-listing","variants":{},"bikes":[{"id":"4cc3bf65-3798-4bc2-b9c9-5a978a4116b7","value":{"entry":{"entryId":"720Vd8ciJIeNagJmw6vVFX"}}}],"id":"3a3510b4-2d91-47ed-b243-cb5cfc78b433"},{"layoutId":"paragraph-section","variants":{},"heading":"","body":"The best thing is getting familiar with how your battery responds to the type of rides you're doing. Now, there's a term out in the world of e-bikes called range anxiety, right? Will my battery last? Will my battery last? Rightfully so. If you're the type of rider who wants to do rides north of 15 miles round trip, in that situation, you want to make sure you have enough juice to get you back home, right? You don't want to be seven and a half miles away and not have the battery power to get you back. Well, two solutions for that one, you know, get an e-bike with the largest possible battery, or purchase a second battery and carry it with you. And what I would say is that a good option could be to buy that second battery after you get a feel for the type of riding you're doing. Right. So, I mean, if you want to spend that extra money initially on the larger battery, you can, or you can get familiar with your terrain and how your battery responds and then make the decision later on.
If you want to buy an extra battery, you could carry it with you in a bag or strap it to your rack. Any of those options is available as well. But if you know, straight out of the gates, you know, I'm going to do rides 20, 30, 40 miles. And of course, look for an e-bike. With something larger than 14 amp hours, right? I would say that's kind of the minimum if you're gonna be a long-range rider. But the other thing about that is even if you do short rides and you do a lot of hills, you're gonna get substantially less range than if you did flat ground. So, as an example, I'm just gonna take you on a ride really quick. I have actually, my battery says full right now. The other thing about some of these gauges is that they're telling you the battery life you have left in the current riding conditions.
","id":"10e4c700-ca79-4844-892d-afe6d11c935b"},{"layoutId":"full-width-image-with-out-bleed","variants":{},"image":{"assetId":"66YQsWhpFWKspvF9SeGeZV","options":{"backgroundSize":"cover"},"mobileAssetId":"","mobileOptions":{"backgroundSize":"cover"}},"id":"c7c4c96d-8e5c-444d-b9f8-ac3a9abbbc79"},{"layoutId":"paragraph-section","variants":{},"heading":"","body":"So if I start to climb a hill using level five, the battery drops basically indicating to me that if I continue at this power output, I'm only going to get about this much battery life left, right? So riding on flat ground has a big impact and can preserve the battery life infinitely. Not infinitely, but for a long time. I've done over 20 miles on an e-bike with a 10 amp-hour battery by just using the throttle, only going on flat ground. So the battery, the motor just has to work a lot less hard in a flat ground circumstance versus a battery or uphill. So again, I'm at full bars right now. Let's go ahead and cruise back to our office, and we'll see how much battery life we get home with. And I'll kind of walk you through how I'm using the battery and the assistance while we're going. And again, I'm 230 pounds. So that has quite a large impact. So use my throttle to get us up this, get us going. And then I'll kick in with my pedal assist. So the entire way home, I'm either going to be in pedal assist five, or I'm going to be using the throttle.
I personally like to just be in level five. Also, I'm a bigger guy. So now you can see my battery has just dropped to two batteries. And again, it's just getting a read on, okay, that's a decent grade hill. He's in level five. You're not going to have much juice left. Okay, now my battery's coming back as we get to flat ground. We're up to three bars. And I suspect here in a second, we're going to get even more bars back. There we go. Now we're climbing to four. Now we're back to half. Now, sitting at half a battery, let’s talk about how battery gauges can be confusing, as they adapt to your riding. These fluctuations emphasize why you need to get a feel for your e-bike’s response over time. If you’re over 200 pounds, ride lots of hills, or use level five assist frequently, it’s even more crucial to choose a bigger battery—north of 14 amp hours—to avoid running out sooner than expected. For example, watch how my battery level changes as I adjust the assist settings.
","id":"45d6a827-f0df-4af7-ac4f-f4b63e0489d2"},{"layoutId":"full-width-image-with-out-bleed","variants":{},"image":{"assetId":"6k9IN1lYl2Gi3QZ1WPDIMT","options":{"backgroundSize":"cover"},"mobileAssetId":"","mobileOptions":{"backgroundSize":"cover"}},"id":"33897f6a-10d9-4218-ac7d-1e0c534f6e26"},{"layoutId":"paragraph-section","variants":{},"heading":"","body":"Now I'm up to three bars over, right? So it's really reading what kind of power output is gonna be required from the motor and trying to give us an estimate on the battery life that we have left. And if you have an electric car, it functions very similarly in that, you know, it's going to tell you, uh, or estimate like in a Tesla, it's going to estimate how much battery life we get into pedal five here for this little hill, how much battery life you'll have left. Now, if you're pumping the air conditioning and the terrain, uh, is, you know, more, more incline or elevation gain than it's suspected. You're gonna get to your destination with way fewer miles on the car than it predicted. And that's a $40,000, $50,000 piece of equipment there versus e-bikes, which are a few thousand for the most part. The estimation of the battery life is definitely not a perfect science just yet, even with electric cars and e-bikes.
Also. And I mean, that's kind of the one. That's kind of the one. Sorry, let me navigate this traffic here. So that's kind of the one thing about, you know, maybe you have a vacuum cleaner that runs off a battery, right? That's kind of the one thing, you know, a vacuum cleaner is a little more straightforward in that you turn it on and you vacuum. An e-bike can be used in so many different ways. You can change the assistance levels, and you can go on different terrains. And so estimating the battery range is quite a bit more difficult. You know, even on your cell phone, right? It says, \" Okay, you've got 90% battery. Well, if you spend the next two hours straight watching a 4K movie on YouTube, you're going to drain a lot more battery than if your phone sat idle and you did nothing with it, right? So everything kind of functions the same.
","id":"b585f60c-3ae5-4720-a97a-2f1e4a910cee"},{"layoutId":"full-width-image-with-out-bleed","variants":{},"image":{"assetId":"6PvUEKGvTUoy53NgY3u15W","options":{"backgroundSize":"cover"},"mobileAssetId":"","mobileOptions":{"backgroundSize":"cover"}},"id":"b5e9f2e3-f07a-4471-a0f0-5d9408dc78a8"},{"layoutId":"paragraph-section","variants":{},"heading":"","body":"And like I said, you just have to start to understand how your particular e-bike responds to your battery, and you know you'll figure it out over time. And I would just say in your first rides, you just want to stay probably a little closer to home as you start to understand, um, how much range you have left after riding in certain conditions. All right, so I'm at half a battery. Now, in all fairness, when I started this ride, it said full battery, but that's when we were stopped. So I don't think that was ever really true. Okay, so I'm back down to three batteries, three little lines, three little bars. Now we're one bar, two bars over halfway. All right, so we got three bars over halfway. See if I start pedaling in level five, what happens? Okay, we're down to two batteries over halfway, and I'm in level five. So again, if I dialed it back a little bit and I didn't use level five, we'd probably have more battery. So the reality is, we were probably more like a little over halfway when we started this ride.
Okay, and as we come to a stop, we've got two batteries over halfway. So we may have burned a little bit of juice. We had some hills, but again, get familiar with your terrain and how you use the assistance, and it will help you figure out your range. So any other questions at all, please comment below or reach out to us at theteam@sixthreezero.com. Don't forget the Simple step through 750 watts is linked in the description if you want to check it out. In addition to that, if you want to come out for a test ride, we're here in San Clemente, California, at 1046 Calle Rocoto Unit K. Come test ride any of our e-bikes before you purchase to ensure you're making the right choice. Also, join our community. We have a Facebook group called Sixthreezero Pedalers. There are thousands of members in the group. Join before you purchase to talk to existing riders to ensure you're making the right choice. Then, when you have yours, post in the group, make friends, and finally download the app to track your rides and compete on the leaderboard.
So thanks for sticking around, and don't forget, it's your journey or experience, enjoy the ride.
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